Descended from German immigrant John Jacob Rector, Washington Swisher Rector
(1845-1918) grew up in Rhea County, Tennessee, after his parents Jesse and Sarah
(Stout) Rector moved from Rectortown, Virginia. Following the outbreak of the Civil
War, sixteen-year-old Rector signed on with Company E of the Twenty-sixth Tennessee
Infantry in the Confederate Army. Union forces captured Rector in 1864 and released
him at the end of the war. He completed a bachelor’s degree in science at Sequatchie
College in Bledsoe County, Tennessee, in 1870. Around this time, several members of
the Rector family moved from Tennessee to Alabama, Arkansas, and Texas in order to
escape poor economic conditions.

Washington Swisher Rector moved to Texas, working as a schoolteacher in several
counties before settling in the Fort Worth area in 1872. He married former pupil
Myra Melinda Selvidge (b. 1859) in 1878, and they had fourteen children, including
cowboy photographer Ray Rector. The family moved to Indian Gap in Hamilton County
before settling in the newly developed Fisher County, lured by the promise of cheap
land. Rector built the family’s still-standing home by hand. He held a number of
positions in the county government, including land surveyor and county and district
clerk (1884-1894). Additionally, he operated the first dairy farm in the county
(1872-1917). An active citizen in the county, Rector served as a member of the
Immigration Society and helped organize the Rotan Masonic Lodge.

In 1917, the Rectors and eight of their children moved to California, where Rector
died a year later.

The Washington Swisher Rector Papers, 1837, 1860-1906, document the activities of
Rector and his wife Myra as well as the Rector, Selvidge, and Stout family members
in Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee. The collection primarily consists of 650 letters
written by Rector during his service in the Confederate Army, as a student at
Sequatchie College in Tennessee, as a teacher and dairy farmer in Texas, and as
Fisher County clerk. Letters to Rector during the Civil War from relatives, friends,
and fellow Confederate soldiers describe camp life in Tennessee and Kentucky,
recounting the election of officers, "conscripting
raids," and other events. Post-Civil War correspondence discusses
courtships, marriages and weddings, births, illnesses and deaths, religion,
education, farming, ranching, business ventures, prices of goods, land purchases,
and migration to the West. The Ku Klux Klan and the Prohibition movement in Texas
are also mentioned.

The Rector family photograph album contains pictures of family and friends.
Broadsides and printed material pertain to freemasonry, school funding, textbook
purchasing, and related topics Additional items in the collection include a Rector
family deed; receipts and other financial records; school subscription lists; an
early plat map of Fisher County; and essays, poems, and speeches by Rector.
Furthermore, the collection contains an annotated index to the papers, typed
excerpts of selected letters, and full transcripts of numerous letters, literary
productions, and other materials within the collection.